Neil Gaiman is one of the most celebrated modern novelists of his generation. Beginning his career as a journalist, the first book he wrote was a biography of the rock band Duran Duran; mixing his two passions of music and writing. Gaiman's breakthrough came about upon the release of his now legendary series of graphic novels called The Sandman. From there, his fans have been lucky enough to follow a writer who experiments with a wide variety of genres, from children’s books, to graphic novels, movie screenplays, songs, novels and a constantly updated personal blog, Twitter and Facebook.
The Graveyard Book is an eerie yarn following the protagonist, Nobody Owens, who is orphaned when a villain named The Man Jack, slips into his home and murders his entire family. When The Man Jack goes to his room to kill him and complete his job, the toddler is nowhere to be found. Fond of a bit of an adventure the child unwittingly escapes his death by wandering out of the house into the darkness. He arrives at a graveyard where the ghosts take pity on him and pick him up after an appearance from his recently deceased parents saying his life is at risk. Closely pursued by the immaculate nose of this sinister man, the infant is protected by the graveyard and all that inhabit it, including the mysterious 'grounds keeper', who wipes away the memory of the child's whereabouts from The Man Jack.
From there the child is adopted by a ghostly couple, Mr and Mrs Owens, who always wanted a child. For his protection he is named 'Nobody' or 'Bod' and kept within the close confines of the graveyard to protect him from the dangers of the outside world, and the man who would kill him, until he is old enough to protect himself.
The book opens in the most foreboding way: "There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife". When asked why his children's books are significantly more chilling than the adult novels he writes, Gaiman revealed that this was not entirely intentional as he had not been aware of it until it was pointed out to him by a critic: "I hadn't really noticed until Anansai Boys, my last adult novel, came out and Kim Newman reviewed it in The Independent and said 'This is a Neil Gaiman adult novel; which means it's far less ruthless than his children's books.' I only then realised he is right. I think when I was a kid the fiction that I loved assumed that I could cope with things and I love writing stories where you give them something to face and deal with that's big and scary and fun."
For Gaiman, these books exist to challenge the imaginations of whoever reads them, stating that: “If other people had written books like The Graveyard Book or Coraline I wouldn't have had to write them”. This same rule applied when Gaiman began writing graphic novels in the past because of the vast amount of novels that had been written before him. Since then he has let go of some of that skepticism and sees it more of an adventure than anything: "I think that was definitely true for me when I was younger because the joy for me of writing comics was knowing that I was in a new field; that I picked up my machete and was carving out an area of jungle that no one had been before. Nobody had done anything like Sandman when I had done Sandman and that was great; I could be original. But I also think there comes a point where I cannot let myself be intimidated by the fact that we have 3000 years of novels on the bookshelves. I'm going to have to try to do some myself."
With that element of perfection present Gaiman decided for many years that The Graveyard Book was not quite what it should be and it could wait until it was exactly what he envisaged before it was released. Biding his time seems to have served him well. Renowned children's author Diana Wynne Jones, who passed away two years ago, deemed this: "The best novel Neil Gaiman has ever written". With such an extensive back catalogue, that is quite a tough call but Gaiman agrees, with a sense of pride. "I think she's probably right. It's actually kind of funny because we sent the book out to a bunch of wonderful authors for blurbs and we kept getting things back like Diana Wynne Jones: 'The best book he's ever written'. Darren Shan: 'The best book he's ever written'. I think it probably is the best novel I have done. I'm very, very proud of it. I'm proud of the shape of it and I'm proud of what it says. It's certainly the first book I've written that I feel is as good as the thing I had in my head when I sat down to writing it."
The idea for the story came about one day, many years ago, when the writer saw an image that really inspired him. "I watched my son, my little boy, riding around the local graveyard on a tricycle and I thought you know I should do something like The Jungle Book only I could do it in a graveyard and instead of a kid being raised by wild animals and taught all the things jungle beasts know, I had him raised in a graveyard by dead people and taught all the things that dead people know. That seemed like a lovely idea. It took me twenty years until I thought I was good enough or learned enough to do the idea justice."
This would seem like quite a morbid and rather terrifying concept - especially to children - but the location becomes comforting and heart-warming. The ghosts are in no way stereotypical. Most are just like humans - besides being able to disappear and walk through walls - but that is not what makes the idea of the dead walking the earth scary. Gaiman's portrayal of the graveyard folk, in my opinion, really changes that perception for children and this is exactly what the author set out to do. "I like the idea of making a book where the graveyard and the dead people are not scary. They're a family. They're warming and embracing; it's nice and comfortable that they are there. But the world outside is a dangerous place and, like anybody out in our world, what he's got to come to terms with - our hero - is that the dead can't hurt you - it's the living that can."
Instead of the concept coming across as terrifying for children, the complete opposite emerges. "I really don't want to write a book that is going to leave kids scared to walk past the local graveyard. I want to write a book which will make kids walk past the local graveyard and look at it with fresh eyes as a nice place."
As with his other children’s books, Gaiman has developed such a huge and loyal fan-base over the years that The Graveyard Book is more than likely going to be read by as many adults as children. When asked if he had this crossover idea in mind when he wrote the book Gaiman explains, “Because we had to come to terms with the fact that it was going to be an adult book as much as a kids book we brought it out in two different editions. The David McKean one is meant to be in the adult shelves of the bookshop and the Chris Riddell illustrated one is meant for the children’s section. So wherever you go in the bookshop you should be able to find it.” Marketing aside “I just wanted to tell the story; I didn’t really care whether it was published as an adult’s book or a children’s book - it was my publisher that said we were going to publish it as both”.
Unusually, for an author of his esteem, Gaiman has been writing a blog on at surprisingly regular basis for over ten years. For him, like former literary collaborator Terry Pratchett, a certain amount of closeness to his fans seems to be an extremely important part of the process of being a writer. On his blog Gaiman chats about what he has been up to with his writing, talks about future projects, answers questions and posts up links to whatever interesting websites he has come across during the day. He believes blogging and fan signings are important for both the fans and the author to make that connection or get some form of feedback: "The truth is that a lot of the time people really don't care if you're there signing or not; what they want is an excuse to say thank you; that you wrote something that touched them or changed them or helped them in some way. It would be really silly to say that Terry Pratchett is going to be in Waterstones so you can line up to thank him. You have a book signing instead and people have a book and they give it to Terry and they say thank you then for getting them through that break-up or for making them laugh."
Iconic fantasy fiction writer Pratchett collaborated with Gaiman on the hilarious Good Omens around the start of the latter's career as a novelist. The book topped the literary charts and was named one the top 100 best read books of all time in the BBC Big Read poll in recent years. Both authors have enjoyed their fair share of success individually so as a collaborative team the result was marvelous. The chance of a sequel in the future was recently lessened with the announcement that the hugely prolific Pratchett has early onset Alzheimer's. "It was one of those things where we did it, we were very happy with having done it and then we were never going to do it again. Then the last time we saw each other we started to plot something that might have turned into Good Omens II. These days Terry has a world in which he has his medical problems and I think, in truth, he's going to be writing books himself. He has his own books to write until the lights go out. I spoke to him recently and he was as sharp as he ever was. That's a good thing."
For now, Gaiman has plenty to concentrate on and has a busy year ahead of him. Currently he has been given the task of writing a two part graphic novel entitled Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader - a monumental task for any graphic novel writer. Also in the pipeline is the screenplay for his novel Anansai Boys and, as a departure from his normal work, a non-fiction book about traveling to China.
Whether it's blogs or screenplays or just plain old novels, Neil Gaiman has been producing hugely original work constantly for several decades now and means to continue at that pace. When asked whether writing is an addiction for him he replied, "It’s something that I love doing; it makes me happy and I'm good at it. That in itself is marvelous; that I'm getting paid to do something that I love. The horrible truth is if I wasn't getting paid to do so I would do it anyway.”
Originally published in Verbal Magazine, November 2008.
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